So is it possible that the reason that German and Japanese post-war cultural reforms were so successful (a question which has been eluding scholars for some time now, which has serious reprecussions in the age of regime changes in Iraq and Afghanistan) is highlighted in the two videos below?

2008-08-19

Asked to explain how he found out that Stephen Harper “secretly” shares Adolf Hitler’s birthday, let alone what it might mean, Fletcher says ,“I’m satisfied I didn’t make it up, okay?”

Wikipedia seems to think Harper's birthday is April 30th. The neat thing about Wikipedia is you can look up days of the year and find out who has a birthday on them. Harper shares his birthday with Queen Juliana, Willie Nelson, Kristin Dunst, and (the same year) Paul Gross(!).

Hitler's birthday is close: April 20th. (A day he shares with Wop May, Carmen Electra, and Napoleon). Hitler actually does die on Harper's birthday, if that counts for anything. Ribbentrop, the Nazi foreign minister who may have been fooling around with King Edward`s mistress, happens to share a birthday with our Prime Minister. Is that good enough for the conspiracy set?

2008-08-16

Well, the 2008 Fringe began on Thursday, and... I'm not going. Just a little too burned out this year, what with all the time in England stalking Spice Girls. I might wander down to the grounds sometime next week with camera in tow, but no guarantees.

Next year I'll try to do the "reviews of 10 plays" thing again. [While we're on the topic, I'm still waiting on some reviews of plays from LAST YEAR... -ed]

2008-08-15

Which of these two revelations in actress Sara Gilbert's wikipedia entry are less surprising?

Personal life

In her teens, Gilbert became a vegetarian. Today, she supports numerous organizations such as PETA, Meals on Wheels, Freedom of Speech, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, and AIDS Project Los Angeles.

She has been in a lesbian relationship with Allison Adler since 2002. They had a son born in October 2004, and a daughter born on August 2, 2007. Allison carried the couple's son and Gilbert carried their daughter.

Another ugly vegetarian trend-follower turns lesbo.Who could have predicted this?

To understand what I mean, lets turn the tables around. Say it was six months or so before the mandatory British election (so 55 months after the previous election), and opposition leader David Cameron (a Conservative) decided to spend a couple of weeks in the United States bible belt touring around pseudo-campaigning for #10. Every night CNN and BBC World are showing huge crowds of evangelical Christians chanting and cheering and giving teary interviews to the cameras how they hope that Cameron will win the forthcoming General Election.

Would this impress the average British voter? Would swing voters be particularly impressed by such a stunt?

Then why the hell does anybody think that Americans would be impressed by it? Seriously, this is a guy who is spending his time showing off how the citizens of other countries are impressed by him, all the while not realizing how damning a statement it is against him. And the Europeans are all playing along. Its truely unbelievable.

Yes indeed, that's right: I left on vacation with 1,099 posts to my (eternal) credit.

Now of course, still suffering from extreme jet lag and getting used to the idea of not converting everything into pounds and euros when looking at price tags, I'm supposed to do an inventory of the last 100 posts and do some math.

...

Or not. We'll return to our original post formating at 1,200. Assuming I'm not on vacation again. Hey, you never know!